Monday night (or tuesday morning?) I checked another thing off of my list-of-things-to-do-before-I-die. Pull an all-nighter. Don't ask me WHY I put that on there when I was 16. I went through and edited the list about a year ago and I'm sure I scratched it off thinking, "Heck No!" but, alas, I have now done it. Every year for as long as I can remember Southgate Youth has had a Youth All-Nighter in December. The youth group comes together and we party. All night long. When I was an actual youth in youth group, I always went home around midnight. It was the practical thing to do.
However! No longer am I IN youth group... rather I take part in LEADING youth group. Which means I needed to get over myself, inject some caffeine into my veins and get pumped for twelve hours of youth group fun. If you follow my twitters you will have seen that I had been preparing for this event for a few days. Conserving energy, getting my head in the game, practicing my what-are-you-talking-about-I'm-definitely-awake-even-though-my-eyes-are-closed look in front of the mirror. I. Was. Ready.
I obsessively twittered throughout the night but gave a fair warning to all my followers. And hey, I didn't lose any either! To be honest, I probably would have unfollowed me. Certain days, I probably wouldn't even read this blog either. In case you missed the updates during the night or are just DYING to know more, here is what my night held.
8:00PM: Rush to Starbucks. I ask for a double grande americano. The barista stares at me. Double? There are usually 3 shots. You mean you want 6? "Sure." Okay... long night ahead? "Yep. Staying up all night." Grab my drink and I go.
8:30PM. Check all the kids in, collect money, get PUMPED in the church foyer. (When our youth pastor emailed out the youth leaders jobs for the evening we all had our individual duties... but at the bottom of the list it said, ALL: HYPE TEAM!!)
9:30PM. Load up the school bus and drive to mini-golf/arcade. This bus was LOUD. These kids were pumped. My all-nighter strategy was to keep my energy levels steady. No screaming for me until early morning, please. By the time 10:30 hit, I am not kidding you, I was tired. That's usually my bed time folks. I video lots of stuff with my Flip camera and we play mini-golf. I win because I'm awesome. I eat something because I'm afraid of caffeine on my empty stomach.
12:00AM: Me and two youth girls walk on over to Tim Hortons to grab something to drink or eat. My stomach feels really empty. And I feel the beginnings of a shake. But I order more caffeine anyway and eat a cookie to counteract the shakes.
1:00AM: Still on the bus, it's a long drive. We pull over in an empty parking lot and have some impromptu shopping cart races. I say a little prayer that nobody falls out of the shopping carts moving twenty miles an hour and cracks their head open. I don't want to sit in any emergency rooms tonight. Nobody does.
1:30AM: Karaoke. I'm a pretty terrible singer.
3:30AM: Load up the bus. Head to Tim Hortons. By this time, my hands are legitimately shaking and my thoughts are speaking to me twice as loudly. I wrote about the Jamie-on-caffeine-sensation a few months back. Check it out. That being said, I avoid caffeine at this stop. I eat two chicken wraps because hey, it's 3:30AM and I need energy. UM. WRONG. I felt so freakin' sick the whole rest of the night. Like a pit of yuckiness in the bottom of my stomach.
4:30AM: Little run around the parking lot with a couple of youth girls. Noooo big deal. Turns out I like running in the middle of the night just as well as running in the middle of the day. Boom.
5:00AM: Hello Walnut Grove pool. We're here to swim. Who decided swimming was a perfectly safe activity in the middle of the night? Another possible liability. Sheesh! We were here for an hour at this point most people were just counting down the minutes. I am still digesting the brick in my stomach.
6:30AM: We arrive back at the church for BREAKFAST. (The sound of that word at that time with what I had in my stomach made me want to throw up. I definitely didn't eat a thing there.) To my amazement, most youth suck back a couple of pancakes and sausages and muffins and orange juice. Their parents arrive at 7AM and they all go HOME. We stay and clean up for a bit.
7:30AM. I'm driving home and can't stop thinking. About all these people on the roads. Going to their jobs. Headed to Starbucks for their morning coffees. And I haven't slept. I feel like a night-shifter. I always wondered how they do it. The answer is: you just do? I get home. Talk to my mom. So past the point of sleeping, it doesn't even sound appealing to me.
8:00AM. I crawl into bed. The last emotion I remember feeling was a little bit of annoyance. I'm all about mornings and I love the daylight and being productive and I was MAD that I wasn't able to be productive today! I considered getting up and staying up until the evening, so I could ENJOY the day instead of sleeping it away. (Definitely not an average teenager?) But then I feel asleep until noon. Weird feeling. Still bummed that I missed half of Tuesday's daylight hours. I'll never get those back.
I'm still recovering. Ran 4 miles at the gym this morning and it pretty much killed me. I think our bodies are meant to maintain regular hours. Which I plan on doing until... NEXT YEAR'S ALL-NIGHTERRRRR! :) And that's the end of my story. I'm editing a huge video of our evening, but here's a couple of screencaps. Just to add something to this post.
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